It feels just like yesterday when I stepped onto the professional stage and my heart was about to burst as I stood among the top actors Joana Popovska, Mitko S. Apostolovski, Sonja Oshavkova, Petar Gorko, Menka Bojadjieva, Julijana Stefanova etc. It feels just like yesterday when in our third year of studies we were chosen for a play at the National Theatre, and I thought from there I would go straight to Broadway or Hollywood. This is how the renowned actor Nikola Projchevski, one of the most prolific ones at the National Theatre in Bitola, with a masterful acting energy on stage, speaks about the beginnings of his career. His distinctive feature is comedy, and his talent to make the audience laugh can be compared to that of the top comedians Petar Stojkovski-Babec and Pepi Mircevski.

A person is either born with acting energy or not

This year, he celebrates a milestone of 20 years on the theater stage with successful hundreds of roles played across the country. He possesses a great power of acting transformation, so in certain plays he performs several roles, or as he jokingly says – “five in one”.

A person is energy… all people are born with different energies; some energies are simply for constant surviving/acting. My energy was always intended for the stage. It wasn’t my choice, I was chosen. Even before I went to watch my first theater play, as if I already knew what it was like there, somehow, I had a clear picture. You either have it or you don’t! Projchevski shares.

From there, his decision to enroll in the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Skopje came spontaneously. He says it’s like when you ask a person when they learned to speak, and they think they always knew. Like every young person, he had doubts and backup plans, but they were never related to mathematics. However, he has never regretted his choice, and even today he speaks with reverence about the professor in whose class he graduated, calling him encyclopedia-man.

I graduated in the class of encyclopedia-man

I graduated from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in the class of Professor Vladimir Milchin. I believe I underwent an excellent educational process, especially when you are in the class of the encyclopedia-man. Even today, when I see the professor in the audience, I get nervous or as we say in Bitola “my legs get cut off”. He is my number one authority, now and always, says Projchevski.

As my birthplace is Bitola, it was somewhat predetermined that after graduation I would work at the National Theater in Bitola, a theatrical institution – a benchmark for the entire region, but also a great school for actors. And why Bitola and the theater in Bitola? Well, in this little country with few people, it somehow seems predetermined where each of us will end up. And why not, for example, in Skopje? Well, it’s not exactly a global theater capital that the world is crazy about, says Projcevski.

A top comedian, who also plays up to five tragic characters at once

With his masterful humor, he is the audience favorite. Known by younger and older people alike. It’s enough for him to appear on stage, and without saying a word, the audience begins to laugh. No matter how serious the theme on stage is, it’s enough for him to make a single move and bring cheer and laughter among the audience.

To be a comedian, to carry comedy, brightness, and pleasant energy on a stage, you need to have a great talent, no matter how immodest that sounds! Again, I’ll say – you are either born with such energy or not, says Projchevski.

He adds that once you are labeled in Bitola, like he carries the label of being a comedian, it can’t be removed, not even with a metal scouring pad. They don’t even try to see him differently, although he performs excellently in every theatrical genre. In his distinctive style, he recounts, “After a serious play, an older woman told me: ‘You are good at everything, especially when you do that thing with your eyebrows, it’s terrifying…’

That he equally excels in tragic roles is evidenced by his success in the play ‘Arturo Ui’ directed by Kjendrim Rijani. In it, he plays five tragic characters, for which he won the award for Best Supporting Actor at the 56th edition of the ‘Vojdan Chernodrinski’ Festival in 2022. Previously at the same festival, in 2011, he received the award for Best Young Actor with the play ‘Obichna Prikazna’ (Ordinary Story). Now, it would be natural to expect an award for a Leading Actor. He says the formula for a successful actor is to constantly play.

Awards accompanied by strong messages

Projchevski knows how to deliver powerful messages about theatrical life in the country at key moments. Thus, upon receiving the award for Best Supporting Actor, he wished for a renovated ‘Marko Cepenkov’ Cultural Center and a new theater in Prilep.

I immensely believe in the educational, museum mission of the theater. It can contribute to preserving a language. I even believe that it can initiate certain changes, that it can raise awareness among certain groups. However, I do not believe that it can radically change a society, especially one like ours, Projcevski is candid.

Many times, he performed with the Bitola Theater abroad, as well as in the Shakespeare’s Globe Theater in London, where he participated in an international acting project in 2015. This project was a great success for him because he was selected together with 24 actors out of 1,800 applicants from around the world. At the auditions, besides excerpts from Shakespeare’s plays, the committee was also fascinated by the poetry of Petre M. Andreevski performed in Macedonian.

From my engagement at the Globe Theater in London, what I remember to this day is how people react when even a drop of sweat falls on the stage. An entire team comes in a second to wipe around you. I didn’t know it was forbidden to walk through the facility with a cup of coffee, and they removed me as if I were a bank robber. That is a factory. For me, theater is something completely different, he adds.

The theater fulfills me, but work is not more important than my family

Even today, he is among the most prolific actors at the National Theater in Bitola. There are times when he performs up to six shows a week, sometimes two, and rarely none. Every occasion carries its own unique essence.

Whatever I do, it will never be more important than my family. Fortunately, I am mentally healthy, so I have no illusions that I would die for the ‘planks that mean the world’. The theater fulfills me, but it tires me as well. I sometimes enter monotonous, repetitive phases. At times everything suits me, at other times I don’t believe in even 0.5 percent of what I’m instructed to do. But when you’re in an institution, not a group, then there’s no liking or disliking – explains Projcevski.

Asked about his plans, he says that the theater is his reality, acting in a film is a possibility, but he also expects a lot of other things, including his participation in the cabarets on Friday and Saturday at ‘Gold Felicia’.

Zhaneta Zdravkovska